


Smells like Lavender

by nonbinary_mermaid



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Massage, beau is a gay disaster, extreme fluff, honestly they are all gay okay sue me, jester just wants to help out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 04:36:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17574002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinary_mermaid/pseuds/nonbinary_mermaid
Summary: Beau complains a little too loudly about her stiff back and Jester offers to give her a massage, since her mom gave her the best advice on the craft, which honestly just has Beau even more nervous.





	Smells like Lavender

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gay.

Traveling is fine. In fact, Beau’s come to love the life on the road as opposed to being cooped up[ in either her parents’ house or the Cobalt Reserve. But one thing she’ll never get used to, is the goddamn fucking back pain. Whether she’s sitting on the cart, riding the horse, walking beside, fighting, sitting, lying down, doing fucking nothing, her back hurts. And yeah, she knows it’s probably because of all the goddamn fighting and traveling the Mighty Nein are doing but maaaaan, can’t a girl catch a fucking break.

Apparently not, because one day when she’s trying to nurse the enormous knot between her shoulder blades and muttering some curses under her breath, Jester, eternal beam of sunshine and happiness, overhears her. They’re on the road headed to a town to stop for the night and Jester positively backflips onto the back of the cart to land next to her.

“HiBeauwhatareyouupto?Whatchadoin?Areyouhurtorsomething?Whyareyougrumbling???” The words come out faster than Beau can parse them, so she just grunts and nods when Jester stops for breath.

“Uh, yeah? I guess my backs a bit sore from that last job we took.” Well, it was sore before the job, but an army of undead giant spiders definitely doesn’t help in the chronic back pain department. Jester is still looking at her though, and she can tell that this isn’t the end of her interrogation. “… My back is also just kinda sore all the time? Does that satisfy you?”

Jester thinks about that for a second. “Why- Why didn’t you tell me before Beau? I know how to give really good back massages! My mom taught me all the best techniques.”

That sends at least four different thoughts through Beau’s head, three of them unsavory. “Uhh, what kind of massages….”

“Beaauuuuu, not that kind!! I mean like actual good for you rubs and stuff!” She starts riffling though the bring pink haver-sack as she continues. “I wish you had told me while we were still in Nicodranas! I could have picked up some oils from my mom!”

You know, under most circumstances, Beau imagines that a girl she may or may not have a crush on saying that she was taught how to give massages by her mother, a world class consort, would be a great tidbit of information. But for Beau, the human disaster when it comes to any relationship other than “Punch”, she could feel her stomach dropping even further out of her body. Maybe they just abandoned it at the turn a quarter-mile back.

“Here it is!” Jester exclaims in joy pulling out a small vile. “It’s a lavender based oil, great for relaxing your big strong muscles.” And she flexes for punctuation. Yeah this was _not_ helping Beau’s gay-ass dilemma at all.

“What did you say about lavender?” Caduceus calls up from the front of the cart. Jester turns around and says, “Oh I was just talking to Beau about massage oil! You don’t have any do you, Caduceus?”

“No? I have other oils though!”

Beau hears Caleb cough from his broken concentration, and she turns around to see Fjord giving her a look. She shoots him the most powerful death glare she can manage. Yasha also hums and Beau can’t tell if it’s a laugh or not. Great. Fantastic. Eventually Caduceus seems to have held Jester’s attention though, talking about the other types of plant based oil he’d encountered at the Blooming Grove. Jester settles in the front and Beau tries to leave her mortified expression behind on the road.

~ ~ ~

Not too much further down the road they finally stop in a small trading hub. There’s a small tavern with some spare rooms near the attic. Jester calls the attic room, of course, and Nott immediately drags Beau and Caleb to the bar with the others following behind soon after. Merriment and revelry are had by all, including an arm-wrestling match between Fjord and Jester which Jester absolutely crushed. Nott ran around the bar collecting bet money from the other patrons and Caduceus smiled into a tankard full of water. About two hours pass and Beau is nice and tipsy when she gets a tap on the shoulder from the world’s biggest social recluse Caleb Widogast.

“I think Jester is waiting upstairs for you.” 

Beau’s happy demeanor immediately dies away to scowl, but Caleb, bless his soul, doesn’t take the hint. “You were heading away from the stairs, I just thought to remind you. She did say you cou-“

“I am. Aware. Caleb.” Beau forces out through her teeth. Keeping along her original course. “I’m… taking a detour.”

She thinks she hears Caleb mutter something else but with the rest of the chatter in the tavern it’s hard to hear. Beau stops, takes a deep sigh ( _fuck it all_ ), and turns heel to head towards the stairs, downing the rest of her ale and leaving on the bar counter as she goes.

~ ~ ~

The top floor is three flights up, but that is still not nearly enough time for Beau to get over her internal turmoil. When she reaches her and Jester’s room, she’s nearly sweaty at the palms. _Deep breath. Calm. Maybe she forgot._ Beau knew that would never happen. She opened the door and found Jester sitting on the floor praying, apparently not noticing the door open. Beau took a cautious step forward and a creaky floorboard gave her presence away: Jester turned around and stood up in one fluid motion, her eyes lighting up when they landed on Beau.

“Finally you showed up! I didn’t know if you were coming before I went to bed, I thought for sure Yasha was going to have you carry you up again.” 

Beau swallowed down _that_ memory before replying. “Nah I’m here, though if you’re busy with uhm, the Traveler, I can-“

“Oh no no no no! I was mostly just rambling to him up to this point!” Jester picks up her things off the floor and puts them back in her bag. Beau is still struggling to make eye contact, Jester’s absolutely adorable nightgown not helping the matter. “Do you still want to do the massage tonight?”

“Yeah, sure.” Beau resigned to her fate. She started taking off her cloak and sleeves before sitting on the bed to take off her boots. May as well since she’s probably going to see afterwards. She looks up as Jester’s getting a bottle of oil out, a jar of some kind of balm, and some incense. _Fuck the Wildmother Jester how intense does this get??_ Jester looks over and her cheeks get slightly darker blue.

“You’ll probably need to remove your shirt and under too. The oil doesn’t stain but it’s a hassle to get out of clothing.”

Beau nods blankly and then turns towards the headboard and does as Jester instructs. She can’t tell if Jester is watching but at this point Beau’s kind of checked out so whatever. 

“You can lie down then, then I can get started.”

“..Okay.”

Beau stretches out stomach down on the bedding, somewhat surprised at how comfy it is given that this was the cheapest tavern in the town; a good amount of give but still firm enough for support. Maybe the attic was for special patrons? Who knows. But the pillow had enough give that Beau’s neck wasn’t craning uncomfortably, and she could still kinda breath. She heard Jester moving something and stepping closer before stopping at Beau’s side, her gown brushing up against Beau’s side.

“Alright, here goes nothing!” Jester says with something between enthusiasm and anxiety, and she gets to work. She rubs her hands up and down Beau’s back to get a feel for the terrain, gentle but firm. Beau can hear her humming in thought, analyzing Beau’s muscles. Beau can’t decide if this is hot or just really impressive. Jester clearly knows what she’s doing. It’s good that Beau is facing the pillow because she can definitely feel her cheeks getting hot. Jester moves up to the shoulders and neck and gods above that sent a lot of different emotions spiraling around Beau’s head. With the ack sufficiently warmed up, Jester decides to kill all the emotions in Beau’s head with her first target: a pair of knots under the deltoids. She pressed her thumbs in deep and Beau nearly shouted. 

Jester quickly pulled back. “I’m sorry! Was that too much? I can go a little gentler…”

“Nope.” Beau grunted from the pillow. “I mean it hurt but it felt good.”

“Okay…” Jester said, moving more cautiously around the area. Still pretty deep in, but she was careful not to go too deep as before. Beau almost didn’t even notice the feeling of oil dripping onto the middle of her back. “My mom taught me all kinds of different massages. Like, sure there’s like twenty different types to get the person horny but,” she moved down to the lower back to tackle the menagerie of knots and sores. Beau could only grunt and try not to moan. “I find these kinds much more interesting and beneficial. Like, sure both feel great but this should really help you out! Me and Caduceus talked about what kind of oil to use for the different kinds, and he gave me some more ideas for the muscle relaxing ones!”

“I… errrrggh.. I bet he did.” Beau managed.

“The lavender in this one should also help you fall asleep better tonight.” Jester started to talk about the balm but she hit one knot right at the base of Beau’s spine that made the monk stifle a groan. She wanted to ask who would let Jester train of them but the sensation of a months-old knot getting stretched out took all the speech away from her.

“There! That should do it for the lower back.” Jester said, apparently very proud of her work. Beau breathed out, unaware that she was holding her breath, but then she felt Jester’s weight shift around her and _oh fucking hell Jester is sitting on me what the fuck fuck_. Jester starts rubbing her neck and Beau buries her face as far into the pillow as she can to keep Jester from hearing her moan. Jester moved around the shoulders, upper arms, and the top of the spine but always kept coming back to the neck and bottom of the skull and fuck Beau running if that didn’t feel like heaven. If heaven was lovingly but aggressively compressing you into the shape of a used bedroll. 

“You have a lot of tension in your neck. You really need to not sleep sitting up.” Jester leaned forward and lightly pinched the muscles around the base of Beau’s neck and Beau had to bite her tongue not to keen. After Jester was done with her neck she moved off of Beau ( _unfortunate_ ) and started wrapping up the process. She warmed up some of the balm in her hands and dragged them down the sides of Beau’s torso, down to the area just above her pants. Then back up and out along the arms, taking some extra time to stretch out each hand and finger. 

With one final press down on Beau’s back, causing a cascade of cracks as Jester literally pushed the air out of Beau’s lungs, she stood up satisfied with her work. “Alright Miss Beauregard, your massage is hereby concluded!”

“Mrfgh.” Beau felt like a 50lb bag of rocks. She couldn’t even move her head to more easily breath. One thing was for sure and that was her back didn’t hurt anymore. Thank the gods for that. Though honestly it was more like her back was so busy trying to recover from the intensity of the past half hour that Beau couldn’t register if any pain was still there. She also didn’t register the sound of Jester putting things away, or moving to open the door, until she heard the unmistakeable sound of Yasha’s voice.

“I was just going to let you know that we’re moving out after breakfast but it seems you’re… busy?” 

Beau literally, physically, and mentally, could not even try to deal with this.

“Hello Yasha!!! I’m not busy I was just finishing up with Beau.” _JESTER PHRASING DEAR GOD._ “You don’t want a massage do you, Yasha?”

“No, I think I’m okay. Though thank you for the offer, I might take you up on that some other time.” Beau didn’t hear anything for a second until she heard heavy footsteps next to her. “Back in Xhorhas my people would usually just squeeze the soreness out of you.”

“What do you mean by that?” Jester asked. That was what massages technically were. Beau didn’t have time to try and parse before Yasha said “Like this,” And then just fucking sat on Beau. Whatever air the monk had managed to reclaim in her lungs was immediately forced out in a long loud grunt. Something definitely cracked too.

Jester took a step forward and Yasha just started laughing. The shaking didn’t help Beau out at all but the image of this enormous aasimar woman sitting on her and _not_ immediately crushing her did make her laugh in return. After a moment Yasha stood back up and gave Beau a gentle rub on the back, a sort of apology as if the idea of being shirtless in a room with the two hottest women Beau ever met wasn’t the world’s best consolation price.

Oh yeah. She was fucking half naked.

Beau was just about to move to sit up and then plopped right back down at that thought. Yes, they’d both see her naked before but suddenly she was _hyper_ aware of that fact. Yasha hummed, taking the hint.

“I’ll take my leave then, goodnight you two.” Jester gave her a big hug on her way out and then closed the door so Beau could put her night clothes on. 

_That was… an experience._

“How do you feel, Beau?” Jester asked after Beau had gotten herself situated.

“… Really good actually.” Beau surprised herself as she did a few stretches. “Everything feels great. You did a fantastic job, Jester.”

Jester blushed slightly, but Beau continued. “Like dude, I honestly feel like I should pay you.”

“Oh my gosh. No, don’t pay me!” Jester laughed, and Beau laughed too. “I’m happy that I could make you feel better.”

“Huh.” Beau was still getting used to the whole ‘people who are your friends can actually give a shit about your well-being’ thing. “Remind me to make it up to you then, I guess.”

Jester started to protest but Beau moved over and gave her a big hug before she could say anything. That appeared to conclude the argument, so both women moved to their respective beds. Gods Beau was so comfortable now, and she smelled fantastic.

“Goodnight Beau,” Jester called quietly from her own bed.

“Goodnight Jester,” Beau returned. “And, thank you. Again.”

“My pleasure, Beau.”

**Author's Note:**

> I had this in my drafts for a few days now but I've finally worked up the courage to fucking finish this thing and post it. 
> 
> Hooray for the first I have that's not a missing scene! Character development.


End file.
